so, peter watts is this very interesting SF author, he wrote blindsight which occupies a special place in my heart because of its sheer fucking weirdness (in a good way, would recommend)
Conversation
Replying to
i came across a blog post of his, i won't be able to remember which one, but basically it's him coming across an interesting scientific study and immediately spinning out a few story ideas from it
and i realized, oh, this man is constantly searching for possible story ideas
1
13
in the subsequent weeks i tried kinda just asking my mind to do the same thing, "hey could you keep a lookout for stuff that would make for cool stories?" and it kind of just of started working
1
1
16
i don't remember if any of the ideas were good, i don't think i kept or used any of them, but this is still something i turn on every once in awhile and get a few ideas from. i had 6 or so written down recently, one of which became this
Quote Tweet
ABYSS. i heard that isn't even his real last name. GATES. i heard he doesn't really have a wife she's just a cover story. BONES. i heard there's one person every day who gets a different word from everyone else. BLOOD. no one knows what happens if they don't get it right
Show this thread
1
9
this is one of the ways i'm learning about intention-setting. you really can just kind of make wishes i guess??? i've done a similar thing with running a poetry process in the background although i haven't used that one in awhile. also a rap process 😅
1
14
anyway would be v curious to hear about other people's experiences along these lines. have you guys just asked your mind to generate ideas for something and it just started working? did you need to "prime the pump" in some way first?
4
7
oh this of course relates back to our boi
Quote Tweet
focus your time and energy on what you want to see more of
Show this thread
1
5
this post where peter watts describes meeting is as good an example of the "always looking for a story" thing as any: "Of course! You’re not going to get this kind of tech without a whole shitload of people deciding to mindmeld with cats!"
rifters.com/crawl/?p=4236
6
Replying to
I'm not sure if I've ever *just* tried asking it for ideas but if I'm e.g. writing an essay over multiple days then I often notice my mind going "hey you could [random thing X you just encountered] as an example in your essay" on a regular basis during that time
1
1
I did for a while have an exercise where I went on walks and then tried to come up with at least one novel interpretation for some ordinary object I saw. Was fun.
1
2
Show replies
Replying to
First time I heard blindsight mentioned was by one of my favorite polish authors - he said he didn’t value it much beyond the worldbuilding ideas and he thought the best part was Watts’s afterword where he cited their origin. I came to the book with these expectations and was
1
1
Show replies